Yeah these are not the kind of trendlines you want to see:
Health officials say that cases of leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, are surging in Central Florida.
In a research letter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that Central Florida has accounted for 81 percent of reported cases in the state and almost one-fifth of reported cases nationwide.
Now, to be sure, this doesn't look like a national- or even state-level crisis. There were a total of 159 cases of leprosy reported in the U.S. in 2020; Florida accounted for one-fifth of those, or a little over 30. So we don't want to blow this out of proportion.
Still. Any rise in leprosy is not great. I think we would all prefer that the leprosy caseload is always on a downward swing.
Leprosy numbers in the U.S. "peaked around 1983," the CDC said, followed by"a drastic reduction in the annual number of documented cases ... from the 1980s through 2000."
